would you kill 63 people for world peace
 

i personally am a pacifist. but i was wondering what i would do if i had the choice to personally murder 63 people or ensure world peace for genarations to come. and i have come to the conclustion that i would murder 63 to ensure world peace. but that does not make sense to me. it goes against every morale bone in my body. but can you imagine the countless lives saved. but then what if all the saved lives led to overpopulation and more death and more death. then the original act of good faith would have backfired. i'm glad i'm not god or something like that. but ultimate powers would be cool.

Probably not. But 62, maybe...

That makes 64 of us.

Only if they were filty, dirty, hippies.

Bit of a pointless question really, when would you ever have to make that sort of decision

Yes.....I would. But, it would be 64 as I doubt I could live with myself after commiting such an act. Still, the benefits, both economic and humanitarian would far outweigh the murders.

I'd have to ditto this thought as well.

Of course this begs the question, is world peace a good thing?

What about the people are currently oppressed, would they stay oppressed?

A world wide police state would qualify as world peace but would you want to live there?

Warfare is as much a part of human nature as sex. It has shaped our species and our evolution. Without it we may well have never evolved beyond a hunter gatherer society. Would we be limiting what we can become if all conflict were removed?

most of our progress as a species has been done through war, world peace is by our nature unobtainable because you can't have world peace and free will

^^^^
It's like the film Equilbrium, except there was alot of killing in that film.
I don't think I could do it though, as most've you have already said, is World Peace totally a good thing?

It depends on who the 63 people would be. I personally do not believe in murder and it would be extremely difficult to have to make that decision, but if the 63 were some sick people (i.e rapist, killers, child molesters), I might have an easier time doing it.

Only if I, personally, get to choose the 63.

Question; why 63? I mean, where did that number come from? Is it just an arbitrary number, or does it hold some significance? Why not 50...or, an even 100?

Shit, some days I'd kill 63 people for a pint of Guinness.

I might do it but only if I was allowed to be one of those 63. It would, IMO, be wrong to choose other people do lose their life and get to live on yourself in this perfect world. A sacrafice made by those who choose to die for the sake of others would be a great honor. If I had to make the decision I would be one of the 63, otherwise it would be seflish and cowardly. I do not consider myself a selish or cowardly person. I am a pacifist as well.

No.

There are somethings more important than world peace, and the state of my soul is one of them, as well as the 63 others.

What if they were 63 murdering, Satan worshiping, dirty hippies :)

ah.....do the ends justify the means?

ultimately, i say no. after all, if i were to say yes, than i would also be saying yes to such concepts as human testing, human farming, and a host of other abominations that could be said to benefit many at the cost to only a few.

remember, once you devalue a life, especially when the action adds value to another, you have lost sight of what is right.

No, not in this case. There are some cases where I would kill someone to save the lives of others, but those are rare, and usually consist of very contorted philosophical thought experiments. Take the case of Jim and the Indians (with apologies for un-PC language). Jim is an explorer in colonial Brazil who happens across a small village of Indians. Because of a recent plot to overthrow the colonial government, a Colonel happens to be there and is going to execute 30 of the Indians (who had nothing to do with the plot). However, in honor of Jim, the Colonel will allow him to kill one of the Indians. If he does so, the others will be allowed to go free. If he does not, all 30 will die. Assume for the sake of the thought experiment that Jim knows he cannot convince the Colonel otherwise and cannot do anything to help the Indians. Here are the questions:
If you were Jim, would you kill one of the Indians?
Does it make a difference if the Indian Jim has to kill is one of the thirty assigned to die?
Does it make a difference if Jim would die if he doesn't kill the Indian?
Does it make a difference if the Indian Jim would kill is willing to die for the sake of the other 29?

For me, the answer is that, if the Indian is one of the thirty who would die anyway, it is right to kill the Indian. The other questions don't make a difference. But many people whose moral judgement I generally respect disagree with me on this. But this is for me a borderline case! Killing 63 (or any other number) for the sake of something as nebulous as world peace, when they may or may not themselves die as a consequence of there not being world peace is something which I could not endorse.

My brain hurts!
I think I would probably agonise over the choice for so long that my time limit would expire and I'd lose the case, so I would say no, I couldn't kill the 63. I also agree world peace isa fallacy that will never come true for any significant period of time.

As for Jim, I would agree to shoot the indian, take the rifle, and shoot the colonel!

i would almost have to have the knowledge of 3000 years in advance to see if the act was worth it. if you killed the 63 people as humanely as you could and you knew that countless upon countless people would not suffer for 3000 years to come than it would be worth it. this is also saying that people would live in harmony w/ each other. but as someone else said that would be taking away free will and i don't know if i could handle that. i just wish the human heart wasn't so cruel and selfish in some people where war and murder is justified. we do behave like the animal kingdom in that we kill for territory, authority over others, and commodities like food or oil. but you would think w/ our logic and knowledge we could overcome that. if we grew up in a loving society where strong values were given to being good to your fellow man and there were core beliefs that looked down upon murder and such, then it would be a lot easier to have world peace. it's all about the children and how they are raised. the problem is breaking the cycle of violence. w/ nuclear weapons becoming easier and easier to come by, we better become a more peaceful world or some idiot is going to finally start a nuclear war. then those 63 are going to become millions or billions.

in reply to #12
it was just an arbitrary number. i get tired of round numbers taking all the glory

Ustwo....out of curiosity, how would YOU define a Hippie?

Not even :p

I have about 7 people, would you add them to the list of people you are choosing? I'd be forever grateful.... Really, I'd even bake you cookies to show my appreciation.

I couldn't do it, because I am too much of a cynic, I wouldn't believe that world peace would happen. Besides, there's never been world peace, what would happen to the world if it was peaceful? maybe that would set of a chain of events and doom us all...

Nope, but eliminating those 7 people would make my day...

http://www.magrathea.de/img/wallpape...ie_640x480.jpg

http://home.earthlink.net/~verylonga...l/ecartman.jpg
God damn hippies!

That sir....is a "picture" of a hippie, not a definition. I was curious as to how you would verbally define these people you would so happily kill, primarily because it is likely I would fit into your definition. While I do realize the level of sarcasm in both of your replys concerning head hippies, I have found that there is often a psycological undercurrent resting within such repetition.

At some point I think peoples sense of humor has been removed.

It was a joke, based a bit on south park. Lighten up, you will live longer, and maybe take a bath :D

Obviously a completely non-plausible question, but line the 63 up and I'd mow 'em down for "world peace for generations to come" - as long as that is defined as I see world peace to be, not some trick definition.

The idea that killing people will create peace is rather non-sensical to me. The state of humanity is going to include conflict as long as there is inequality in the distrubution of resources between nation-states and with-in them (and I doubt that will ever go away).

I think the ethical approach to killing people should be along the lines of "if I don't do this, then more people will die then if I don't" or, in this age of nation-states, "if I don't do this, then some of <i>our</i> people would die". Both of those situations are typically hard to gauge. I think some huge failures of acting appropriately to create people that would including the high probability of killing some people would have been in Rwanda and Somalia, and now in Darfur. Rwanda shows how slowing reacting to world events lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Somalia shows how undermanning an operation for peace can lead to more violence (by feeding warlords and their followers with food meant for humanitarian aid).

I don't have the will to make decisions that could fall in this domain, so I will refrain from pulling myself in that situation (which should hopefully be easy given that there are so many others out there vying for that kind of power).

The question creates a paradox. Just because people don't die, that doesn't bring them peace. What about the family members of those 63 people? Will life be peaceful for them? What about your own life? Could it be peaceful knowing that you killed 63 people?

Create world peace by helping people, not by killing them. Even if I got theoretical assurences like, "Yes, their familiy members would live a peaceful life," I still wouldnt' do it.

It all reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode, where a guy gets a box or something, and if he opens it he gets a ton of money. The catch is that the person who gave him the box will kill someone. "Don't worry," the box-giver says, "It will be someone you don't even know." So the guy takes the money, and the box-giver comes back to pick up the box and lets him know that he'll be taking to offer to someone else next. "Someone you don't even know."

I could envision that happening in this scenario. Enough people receive and accept this proposition that every human on Earth winds up getting killed. Hence, peace.

No, Gandhi had it right. Killing is no solution.

no. the means of death are not well weilded by those seeking life. intentions be damned...it will still be death...

fyi:its gandhi, not ghandi

i already have a little hitlist of the ppl this country could do without...now all I need are the means
noir:the one who carries the sins of humanity and in the darkness, guides them

the bargain is absurd.

who would guarantee it would be carried out?

I think the summary is violence breeds violence. Killing people is never going to acheive anything!
Peace through violence and death? An interesting idea...

That's a good question.

A more relevant version would be: How many of your countrymen would you be willing to send off to their deaths to increase your own percieved level of safety by an intangible margin?

But that's a different problem altogether, filtherton, not a different version of the same problem. A lot of mistakes are made in political theory when people start to think of the state as just a person writ large.

my question is the same as some previous posters. why would you want world piece? it is through competition and war that the human race improve ~_~

It's still a good question.

Personally, I think that killing 63 people in general is a good idea. That is, provided they are a detriment to society or just happen to rub you the wrong way.

Do they have to be random, innocent people? I'm sure I could find 63 terminally ill people who would agree the be euthanised -- does that count as killing them?

I would do it for the sake of humanity, yes its cold but its what I would rather have. If they were close to me there would be 64 deaths the last one my own for the lst atrocious act to stain the hands of man with blood; thus we get what you asked, its fulfilled and then there is a last act of my own chooseing.

But that would also open the question of defineing peace, what do you call peace? A utopia or would you settle for random genocides being ended and wars not happening? Disbanding of gands and other organized crime is that it? Perhaps implamantion of communism so were all equal? What do you want peace to be in this context?